The present invention relates to stowing items on a tray, and more specifically, to actuating the items in order to improve stowing density.
Stowing robots or machines can be used to place items in a container (e.g., a tray or tote) which is then stored for retrieval later. For example, during intake, items may be separated and individually stowed in a container. Later, in response to a customer order, the items may be retrieved from the container (e.g., one at a time) to fulfill the order. The stowing robot can use intelligent stow algorithms to maximize the number of items that can be placed in a container. However, storage density can deteriorate when the items are different from one another (e.g., random). The different sizes and shapes of the items can result in gaps between them which can reduce the density of the items in the container, which means more storage space is required.